Monday, 14 September 2015

Hiding for their lives: Why I wrote The Defenceless

Today’s guest blog is by Finnish author Kati
Hiekkapelto. Kati Hiekkapelto is a
bestselling author, punk singer, performance artist and special-needs teacher.
She lives on an old farm on the island of Hailuoto in Northern Finland with her
children and sizeable menagerie. Her debut novel The Hummingbird was shortlisted for the 2015 Petrona Award.The Defenceless won the top Finnish
crime award in 2014. The Vuoden
Johtolanka (Clue) Award is given annually to the best Finnish crime fiction
novel by the Dekkariseura(Finnish Crime Society).

One of the primary issues underpinning the plot of The Defenceless is illegal – or, as I
prefer to call it, undocumented – migration. ‘Illegals’ are everywhere, and
they are often families with small children, moving around Europe, being sent
here and there like postcards by government authorities. It is a reality that
is not really evident, as we go about our everyday lives. These people are not
part of the society; they cannot work, go to school, rent a flat or receive
social benefits. If they become ill, they can´t even go to a doctor because
they have no ID. But they exist and their ‘illegal’ underground lives, stripped
of any basic rights, is actually better than returning to their home countries,
where most of them would probably face death. They are hiding for their lives.

In Finland, I am involved in a number refugee
causes, and on one occasion I got to know a family in just such a situation. I
was writing The Hummingbird when I
met a Christian family from Pakistan – a mother, father and two children. They
had been in Finland for several years, living in asylum centres. The youngest
child was born here and the older was attending school, where he had learned
excellent Finnish. And then one day they heard that their application for
asylum was declined. The police could turn up at any moment to send them back
to Pakistan.

The decision to deport was based on how the Finnish
Immigration Service defined the security situation in Pakistan at the time.
They decided that it is a safe country – at the very same time that the
Ministry for Foreign Affairs was advising Finnish people travelling to Pakistan
quite the opposite. They reasoned that Pakistan, and especially certain areas
of it (my family was from one of these areas), was dangerous to Finnish people
but not to a Christian family whose home was occupied by extreme Muslims and
whose life was in danger. The father of the family was extremely distressed. He
had believed that Christian Europe would understand and help his family, but
they didn’t seem to care, or to realise the grave danger that would face them
upon their return.

So we were hid this family for a while in Hailuoto,
where I live, keeping them underground until their appeal to the higher court
was completed, which would give them a legal right to stay until their case was
re-examined. In the end, they were lucky. Their appeal was accepted and they were
granted permission to stay permanently in Finland.

But these things rarely have a happy ending. Many
people are refused, some of them for good reason, of course, but far too many
because officers either have no time to research their situation properly or
they have incorrect and distorted information about safety in their home
countries. I call this a racist immigration policy. Finland is difficult
country to get into and it is meant to be so. We simply don´t offer enough
asylum. The number of immigrants in Finland is embarrassingly low compared to
any other welfare country.

This is how Sammy, one of the main characters in The Defenceless, began to take shape. I
wanted to imagine and describe the situation where anything, even a life
sentence in prison, would be better than going back home.

I think every writer – and especially a crime
writer – is interested in hidden realities, ‘sub’ worlds behind the visible,
‘normal’ daily life we occupy and see. There is so much going on under the
surface of our Nordic welfare state, and the average person simply doesn’t
realise it. We go to work and to school; we shop and go home to rest and hang
out with our families, believing that everything is fine. It’s too easy to
close our eyes and turn on the telly. Maybe this is the main reason I want to
write about minorities and refugees in my crime novels. I want people to see.

You can find out more
about Kati Hiekkapelto and her work on her website. You can also follow her on Twitter @HiekkapeltoKati. You
can also find her on Facebook.

The
Defenceless by Kati Hiekkapelto is
out now (Orenda Books, £8.99)

When an old man is found dead on the road –
seemingly run over by a Hungarian au pair – police investigator Anna Fekete is
certain that there is more to the incident than meets the eye. As she begins to
unravel an increasingly complex case, she’s led on a deadly trail where illegal
immigration, drugs and, ultimately, murder threaten not only her beliefs, but
her life. Anna’s partner Esko is entrenched in a separate but equally dangerous
investigation into the activities of an immigrant gang, where deportation
orders and raids cause increasing tension and result in desperate measures by
gang members – and the police themselves. Then a bloody knife is found in the
snow, and the two cases come together in ways that no one could have predicted.
As pressure mounts, it becomes clear that having the law on their side may not
be enough for Anna and Esko.